On January 12, 1969, in Miami's
Orange Bowl, the New York Jets met the heavily-favored Baltimore Colts
in Super Bowl III, the championship game of professional football for
the 1968 season. The Jets, winners of the American Football League playoffs,
sought to avenge the drubbings AFL teams had taken in the two previous
meetings between their upstart mickeymouse* league and the establishment
National Football League. In those two contests, the AFL champion had
been so thoroughly dominated by its NFL counterpart that cracks began
appearing in the proposed merger of the two leagues. If the AFL didn't
prove it could compete soon, the merger would be in serious jeopardy.
A 26-team league with ten "last-place" teams would hardly seem credible
to the ticket-buying public.

The NFL Colts'
1968 season had been spectacular, by any measure, even though their legendary
quarterback, John Unitas, had missed the entire regular season due to
injury. Their 13-1 record was the best in football, they had scored 402
points and yielded only 144, and they had avenged their only loss, to
Cleveland, by destroying the self-same Browns in the NFL championship
game, 34-0. Some analysts called the Colts "the best team ever." Meanwhile,
the AFL Jets paled in comparison, having been fortunate to become the
champion of their league. Their only hope against the Colts seemed to
be their loud-mouthed quarterback, Joe Namath, whose passing ability gave
them at least some chance to score against the Colt defense. Nonetheless,
the Jets were 18-point underdogs at game time.

ANALYSIS OF THE TEAMS

The Colts finished
1968 with a 13-1 record and a point-scoring differential of +258, a number
reached by only a handful of teams to this day. Eleven of their 13 wins
could be described as "crushing." The Jets' record, meanwhile, was just
11-3 and their scoring differential was only +139; their mediocre defense
yielded 280 points, almost twice as many as Baltimore. It should be noted
that the second best team in the Jets' division had a record of just 7-7,
and the Jets benefited from a soft schedule. The other teams in their
division had a feeble combined record of 17-37-2, and they played four
games against teams with truly pitiful defenses. Nonetheless, the Jets
had still managed to lose to hapless Buffalo (1-12-1) early in the season,
35-37. The score was typical of the AFL's "wide-open" (i.e., no defense)
style of play.

The Colts, meanwhile,
had to play both their arch-rival Rams (10-3-1) and a tough 49er team
(7-6-1) twice, as both were in their division. The Colts won all four
games, and nine others (including a hard-fought win over defending Super
Bowl champ Green Bay), losing only to the Cleveland Browns (10-4), whom
they whipped 34-0 in the NFL championship game. The three other teams
in Baltimore's division had a combined record of 19-21-2 -- fairly typical
-- and a much better record than the teams in the Jets' division.

Two other AFL teams, the Chiefs and Raiders, had better regular season
records than New York and were statistically superior. Additionally, the
Jets were fortunate to win their championship game against Oakland, recovering
a lateral at game's end which their opponents ignored -- apparently believing
it to be an incomplete forward pass.

While the two Super Bowl III teams appear statistically similar (without
factoring in the Jets' easier schedule and the obvious overall
inferiority of the AFL itself*), the Colt defensive unit was clearly superior
where it counted -- keeping opponents' points off the scoreboard.

*Four of the ten AFL teams (Boston, Buffalo, Denver and Cincinnati)
were crap, but only three of the sixteen NFL teams (Atlanta, Philadelphia
and Pittsburgh) Additionally, in 1970, the first season of the new 26-team league, the AFC was decidedly inferior to the NFC-- see the SRS rating system at pro-football-reference.com for 1970-- and two of its best teams were the former NFL's Colts and Browns!